downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 15603.08articles per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
- History
Denmark
Strongest usable evidence: Anticipation, at 98.1. Coordination needs more evidence: confidence is 0.23.
Raise, lowest first
No low-scoring dimension has usable evidence.
Measure before managing
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Coordination | 0.23 | 99.6 |
| Experimentation | 0.33 | 42.3 |
| Shared Purpose | 0.42 | 75.0 |
These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.
Why this country is included: Added in the 9.0.0 completion, which takes every country of a million people or more that is measurable in all nine capabilities.
Anticipation98.1Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
Denmark
Read Denmark beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.
- Usable or good evidence
- Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
- The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
- Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.
A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
| Coordination | 0.23 | 2 of 5 | 0.79 | no trend | 88.0 | -11.6 | |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 2 of 4 | 0.96 | +13.3(2) | 83.0 | -15.1 | |
| Trust | 0.50 | 5 of 7 | 0.85 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Adaptability | 0.62 | 4 of 6 | 1.00 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Shared Purpose | 0.42 | 3 of 6 | 0.92 | -2.6(2) | 77.0 | +2.0 | |
| Agency | 0.56 | 4 of 5 | 0.75 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Learning | 0.55 | 3 of 4 | 0.81 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Building | 0.57 | 4 of 6 | 0.90 | +6.4(3) | no data | no estimate | |
| Experimentation | 0.33 | 4 of 9 | 0.81 | -2.6(3) | no data | no estimate |
How to read this page
Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.
A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.
- direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Confidence
- very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
- thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
- usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
- good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.
Anticipation
How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
+13.3 over 10 years, from 84.8 in 2016 to 98.1 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 92.05index 0-100
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
- History
Government foresight capacity
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.
Long-horizon research commitments
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of new grants
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2023
3 % of GDP, rank 11 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2023
8,838 per million people, rank 3 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
246,546 per million people, rank 1 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Teknologiraadet, the Danish Board of Technology, abolished in 2012
Denmark's parliament abolished the statutory Board of Technology, set up by Act no. 375 of 14 June 1995 to assess technology and report to the Folketing, by Act no. 559 of 18 June 2012, after an all-party budget agreement of 15 November 2011 withdrew its annual grant, which had been DKK 10.5 million in 2011, to fund the research reserve.
10.5 million DKK, annual grant to the board of technology in the finance act, 2011. Folketinget, L 79 (2011-12), Forslag til lov om ophaevelse af lov om Teknologiraadet, explanatory notes, via Retsinformation, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: A statute gave a self-governing board its own Finance Act grant and a duty to report to parliament each year; an all-party budget deal then reallocated that grant to research funding, and parliament repealed the act unanimously.
Limits: The figure was read in the bill's XML (https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/ft/201112L00079/xml), because the eli page renders with JavaScript; the vote (104 for, none against) and the law number and date come from the Folketing's open data API (oda.ft.dk, case 9940). The board was a technology assessment body with participatory methods, which is adjacent to strategic foresight rather than the same thing. Its work did not stop: Aktstykke 65 of 20 March 2012 let it create a foundation, Fonden Teknologiraadet, which continues as a non-profit that sells projects, so what ended is the statutory public function and its guaranteed grant, not every activity. The bill puts the annual saving at about DKK 10 million and sets aside DKK 4.5 million for winding up in 2012. The 1995 act replaced an earlier Technology Board (Teknologinaevnet) under a 1989 consolidated law, so the public function predates the start year given.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 83.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Panelist B's point that the article ceiling partly reflects a pharma-heavy research system is fair, so I trim to 83. I hold well above C's 76 because the Danish National Research Foundation's ten-year centres, the registers and an energy plan kept across governments are anticipatory institutions, not purchases.
- 84.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Early wind, digital public infrastructure and participatory technology assessment are acting-early records, not just research volume, which answers C's wealth discount. I trim one point for the pharma-heavy article ceiling and the weak formal foresight unit in central government.
- 79.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
A and B cite early wind, digital infrastructure and long-horizon funder commitments, which are conversion into action and move me up from 76. I still discount the article ceiling as a pharma-heavy, wealth-linked outcome.
Agency
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 6.849per 1,000 aged 15-64
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 3.5days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 5count
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
- History
Adults doing digital tasks
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 7.7mean 1-10
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
99.8 % of population, rank 2 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
98.7 % aged 15+, rank 9 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2024
144 % of GDP, rank 6 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
Coordination
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Government effectiveness
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Regulatory quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.
Logistics performance
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0hours
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
- History
Budget execution fidelity
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no datapercentage points from approved budget
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
- History
- no data
Note: Observable alignment between an approved public plan and what government spent. The API covers 113 of 125 countries, with a latest year between 2016 and 2024. Values above and below 100 both indicate deviation, so the transform measures absolute distance from the approved budget rather than rewarding overspending. See D55.
University-industry collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Innovation Index
- History
- no data
Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.971index 0-1
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
- History
- one year
Public-private collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2025
1.152 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Erhvervsforsker, the Industrial PhD and Industrial Postdoc programme
Denmark's innovation fund (Danmarks Innovationsfond, formerly Innovationsfonden) awarded 138 Industrial Researcher grants in 2025, from 252 applications and for 147.4 million kroner, each funding a researcher employed by a company and enrolled at or supervised by a university.
138 grants, grants awarded for industrial researcher (industrial phd and industrial postdoc), 2025. 147.4 million Danish kroner, amount invested in the programme, 2025. Danmarks Innovationsfond (Innovation Fund Denmark), programme page 'Industrial Researcher', retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The state pays part of a company's salary cost for a researcher it employs and the university's supervision cost, so that a doctorate or postdoc is carried out on a company problem with joint supervision.
Limits: The fund reports on its own programme, and the page states only 'All figures are from 2025' with no earlier years, so no trend can be read from it. The page was read through a fetch service; the fund's web firewall refused direct script requests and the annual report PDFs, so the multi-year series could not be checked. A grant is an award at the start of a three-year project, not a completed doctorate, and the count mixes Industrial PhDs with Industrial Postdocs and does not say how many host organisations are public bodies rather than firms. The start year is the commonly cited 1970 founding of the Danish industrial PhD scheme and is not on the cited page. Applications fell to 252 in 2025, and a search snippet gave 140 grants and 149.6 million kroner for 2024, which we could not open at source.
MitID, the digital identity built by the state and the banks
Denmark's Agency for Digital Government, representing the state, regions and municipalities, and the banks, through a Finance Denmark subsidiary, jointly own MitID, launched in May 2021 to replace NemID and migrated in 2021 and 2022; by July 2026, 97.2 percent of residents over 15 had an active MitID, and it averaged 94.4 million transactions a month in 2025.
97.2 % of population over 15, share of the population over 15 with an active mitid, 2026-07. 94.4 million transactions per month, mitid transactions per month, average for 2025, 2025. Digitaliseringsstyrelsen, MitID statistik (mitid.dk); partnership terms on digst.dk, Om MitID, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The state and the banks tendered and co-own one identity solution that works for both online banking and public services, contracted one supplier to build and run it, and moved about five million users off the previous shared solution, NemID.
Limits: The page is run by the partnership the record describes, so this is the owner grading its own system; it says the figures were updated in July 2026 and the 94.4 million is labelled an average for 2025, while the 97.2 percent and the 5.3 million registered users carry no separate date. The page refused WebFetch with HTTP 403 and was read with a browser user agent. The partnership terms (established in 2016 after a tender, the state represented by the agency, the banks by an FR I subsidiary of Finance Denmark, the partnership owning the rights to the solution, name and logo) and the timeline (go-live May 2021, migration through 2021 and 2022) are on https://digst.dk/it-loesninger/mitid/om-mitid/. The build and operation were contracted to one private supplier, Nets DANID, for DKK 939 million plus ten years of operation, so the private side is both the banks as co-owners and a vendor. Near-universal coverage follows from mandatory digital post and bank login in Denmark, not only from the partnership's design, and the share says nothing about people who cannot use the app; the minister sent parliament a project evaluation in September 2024 (ft.dk, DIU Alm.del bilag 3), which this record has not read.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 88.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
I hold at 88: tripartite bargaining, municipal-state agreements and a civil society at the frame ceiling are durable coordinating institutions. The panel agrees the zero-hour border time is a single-market artefact, which is already priced in.
- 88.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Tripartite bargaining, cooperatives, municipal-state cooperation and very strong civil society make coordination among independent actors routine. All three panelists discount the EU border artefact; I hold 88.
- 87.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Tripartite bargaining and civil society strength at 99 are direct measures of independent actors organising, which income does not buy. Zero border time is a customs-union artefact and budget execution is missing, so I stay a little under the indicator.
Trust
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Rule of law
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Control of corruption
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 485days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.788% of firms
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 3.603scale 0-4 (never to always)
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
- History
- one year
Intentional homicide rate
downstream outcomeretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataper 100,000 people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
- History
- no data
Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 73.9% agreeing
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
- History
- one year
Trust in public institutions
perception proxyno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% expressing confidence
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD Trust Survey / WVS
- History
- no data
Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 75.3% expressing trust
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
- History
- one year
Court case clearance rate
downstream outcomeno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of incoming cases
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
- History
- no data
Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Confidence in the courtsJoint EVS/WVS (E069_17), 2022
25.6 % a great deal, higher is better. Share of survey respondents saying they have a great deal of confidence in the justice system and courts, of the four answers a great deal, quite a lot, not very much and none at all, in the Joint EVS/WVS 2017 to 2022 survey round.
Confidence in the courts is the public half of what this capability asks: whether people expect the rules to be enforced when a stranger breaks them. It is not scored because the survey answer reads two things the number cannot tell apart. Where courts are independent, confidence is a judgment of how they perform. Where they answer to the state, it is also deference, and saying otherwise to an interviewer has a cost. In this frame the pattern runs the wrong way. India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all electoral autocracies in the V-Dem 2025 classification, lead on the share saying a great deal, and Vietnam and China, the two closed autocracies surveyed, lead once quite a lot is counted too. The ten electoral autocracies average 21.8 percent saying a great deal and the two closed autocracies 28.1, against 13.6 for liberal and 8.4 for electoral democracies. Scored, it would rank highest the states whose courts are least able to rule against them. Income is not why it is left out: the share correlates about -0.18 with log GDP per capita. The value is the share saying a great deal; the share saying quite a lot is in the source note.
Learning
How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.755index 0-1
- Year
- 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 32.73% of firms
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
- History
Adult learning participation
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
- History
- no data
Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.684ratio to world average
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2024
79 % gross, rank 26 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2022
6.4 % of GDP, rank 12 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 2018
20.6 % of secondary, rank 34 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Arbejdsmarkedsuddannelser (AMU), adult vocational training courses, and their decline
Statistics Denmark counted 386,879 participations in Denmark's state-funded adult vocational training courses (AMU) in 2024, about 7,056 full-time equivalents, down from 1,050,944 participations and 15,307 full-time equivalents in 2010.
386,879 participants (course participations), participants in labour market educations (amu), all denmark, calendar year, 2024. 1,050,944 participants (course participations), same series at its peak year, 2010. Danmarks Statistik (Statistics Denmark), StatBank table VEU20 'Participation in supplementary courses', field H39 'Labour market educations, AMU', retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The state funds short, employer-relevant vocational courses for skilled and unskilled adults, designed by the social partners and delivered by vocational schools and AMU centres, with an allowance paid during the course.
Limits: A participant in this table is a course participation, not a person: AMU courses are typically one to a few days, so one worker taking several courses counts several times, and the full-time equivalent series (7,056 in 2024 against 15,307 in 2010 and 11,278 in 2005) is the better measure of volume. The 2009 and 2010 peak was inflated by the financial crisis, when laid-off and work-sharing workers were sent on courses; against the pre-crisis level of 621,037 participations in 2005 the 2024 count is still about 38 percent lower, so the erosion does not rest on the crisis peak alone, but it is smaller. The 2025 figure in the same table is 218,057, a fall we have not seen explained and which may reflect incomplete registration, so the record stops at 2024. The decline reflects several things the table cannot separate: user fees introduced and raised in the 2010s, cuts to adult education allowances, and changes in course supply. The 1960 start is the founding of the AMU system as commonly reported, not stated in the table.
Experimentation
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
-2.6 over 10 years, from 44.2 in 2016 to 41.6 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
-11.9 over 20 years, from 53.5 in 2006 to 41.6 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1090per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 5520per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 135per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 152124per million people
- Year
- 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
- History
- no data
Venture deals
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD / national VC associations
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.
Early-stage entrepreneurial activity
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no data% aged 18-64
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
- History
- no data
Note: From the GEM Adult Population Survey, entered by hand because GEM has no open API. TEA counts every new business, so necessity self-employment scores the same as a funded startup, which is why Chile and Argentina sit above the United States here. Read it as how many people are trying, not as how much value the attempts create. GEM does not run every economy every year: Singapore last took part in 2014 and the recency term marks that value down hard.
Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no data% not deterred
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
- History
- no data
Note: Stored as 100 minus the published GEM fear of failure rate, so the direction matches the rest of the registry. GEM measures that rate among adults who already see good opportunities, not among all adults, so the denominator differs from the label. Attitudinal: bankruptcy law and time to discharge would be the observable substitute and are still worth wiring beside it.
Firms through regulatory sandboxes
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no datafirms per million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national regulators
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.
University spinouts
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national TTO associations
- History
- no data
Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.
Business share of R&D
capability inputretired, see notes- Raw value
- no data% of R&D
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD MSTI / RICYT
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Regulatorisk sandkasse for AI (Datatilsynet and Digitaliseringsstyrelsen)
Denmark's data protection authority and digitalisation agency selected two projects from 23 applications for the first round of their regulatory sandbox for AI in July 2024, two from 18 applications in June 2025 and three more in July 2026, seven projects in all.
7 projects, projects selected across the first three rounds (2 + 2 + 3), 2026-07-09. 23 applications, applications received for the first round, 2024-05-21. Datatilsynet, news 'Tre nye AI-projekter udvalgt til den regulatoriske sandkasse' (9 July 2026), with the round one (8 July 2024) and round two (18 June 2025) announcements, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Two agencies run annual application rounds, pick a handful of AI projects whose questions others share, give each months of guided dialogue on data protection, and publish final reports so the answers reach firms that never applied.
Limits: The total of seven is our sum of three announcements (https://www.datatilsynet.dk/presse-og-nyheder/nyhedsarkiv/2024/jul/to-ai-projekter-udvalgt-til-foerste-runde-af-den-regulatoriske-sandkasse and https://www.datatilsynet.dk/presse-og-nyheder/nyhedsarkiv/2025/jun/to-ai-projekter-udvalgt-til-anden-runde-af-den-regulatoriske-sandkasse); the third announcement gives no application count. Not every participant is a firm: round one included a project led by three municipalities with Systematic, round two the charity Boerns Vilkaar, and round three Region Hovedstaden with Kintella, so firms are fewer than seven. The sandbox offers guidance on data protection law, not derogations, and it is a GDPR sandbox rather than the AI Act sandbox the EU requires. Applications fell from 23 to 18 between the first two rounds. The Danish FSA's FT Lab, the financial sandbox since 2018, publishes admissions only as individual news items and no total, so it was not used; the national figure across regulators is therefore higher than seven by an unknown amount.
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 5.529% of labour force
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 14.1% of unemployed
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
- History
- one year
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.072index 0-1, lower = more diversified
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
- History
- one year
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 4.56% of products not exported competitively at the start
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
- History
- one year
Disaster preparedness and recovery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- INFORM / UNDRR
- History
- no data
Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.
Institutional responsiveness
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
82.2 % aged 15+, rank 9 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
43.4 per 100 people, rank 10 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2024
6.2 % of output, rank 30 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT), 2025
2.2 % of employment, rank 4 of 102. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Lønkompensation, the 2020 wage compensation scheme
Denmark's government, employers and unions agreed a wage compensation scheme on 14 March 2020, the Danish Business Authority opened applications 11 days later on 25 March and decided about 90 percent of applications within 30 days, paying DKK 12.7 billion in the first phase (March to August 2020) on 66,631 applications from 34,042 firms.
11 days, days from the tripartite agreement to the opening of applications, 2020-03-25. 12.7 DKK billion, wage compensation paid in the first phase, 2020-08. Rigsrevisionen, Beretning 6/2021 om Erhvervsministeriets forvaltning af hjælpepakker under COVID-19, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The government agreed the scheme with the employers' and workers' organisations in one tripartite deal, and the Danish Business Authority built the application system on existing case systems and public register data, with automatic checks deciding low-risk cases at once and a later control for the rest.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF: the 14 March agreement and the 25 March opening on printed page 7 (PDF page 14), Table 1 with applications, firms and payments on PDF page 11, and the 90 percent decided within 30 days on page 4 (PDF page 10). The audit office states that the ministry normally needs several months to set up such a scheme; the comparison is the ministry's own claim. Speed was bought with deferred control: the office found that control relied mainly on an after-control that had not yet been carried out, had been postponed by about 11 months to as much as a year and a half after payment, and had no earlier check of the riskiest cases, so some firms may have received compensation they were not entitled to and that cannot be recovered (Statsrevisorernes bemaerkning, PDF pages 3 to 4). The scheme was later extended into four phases, with DKK 19.4 billion paid by October 2021; the claim covers the first phase only. The record counts firms and applications, not employees: the office's report gives no count of workers covered.
Civil defence shelters and protective trenches, and their erosion
Denmark's Emergency Management Agency counted about 4,693,000 places in public shelters, protective concrete trenches and building shelters at the end of 2001, and the municipal count it collected in 2022, the first since then, recorded about 3.54 million, with places in concrete trenches down from 152,335 to 107,658 and in building shelters (sikringsrum) from 3,743,822 to 3,307,400, after municipalities had stopped requiring shelters in new buildings.
3,538,595 places, places in concrete trenches, other public shelters, building shelters and supplementary rooms, sum of the four national totals in the 2022 count, 2022-06-27. 4,693,000 places (about), places in shelters (concrete trenches, combined public shelters, supplementary public shelters and building shelters), 2001-12-31. Beredskabsstyrelsen (Danish Emergency Management Agency), 'Opgørelse over antal pladser i beskyttelses- og sikringsrum 2022', table updated 27 June 2022, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The state built public shelters and protective trenches and required shelters in new buildings during the Cold War, then devolved shelters to municipalities in 1993, which stopped requiring new ones and let some be closed, until the 2022 security shock prompted the first national count in twenty years.
Limits: The 2022 total is computed here by adding the four national totals printed at the foot of the two-page table (107,658 trench places, 60,432 other public shelter places, 3,307,400 building shelter places and 63,105 supplementary places); the agency itself prints no grand total. Its release (https://www.brs.dk/da/nyheder-og-publikationer/publikationer2/alle-publikationer/2022/beskyttelsesrum-2022/) says the data were not yet validated, that building shelters are under-registered in the building register, and that it expects the consolidated count of building shelter places to be 'somewhat higher' than the table but lower than in 2002, so the size of the fall is uncertain. The 2001 figure is from the agency's August 2002 report on shelter preparedness (https://www.brs.dk/globalassets/brs---beredskabsstyrelsen/dokumenter/ovrige-emner/2020/-rapport_om_beskyttelsesrumsberedskabet-.pdf, PDF page 23), which also gives the categories; the supplementary category fell most (720,000 to 63,105) and may not be defined the same way in both counts. The same 2002 report says the need under the old target of one place per resident was estimated at 6.5 million places in 1991, so the stock never met the target. The erosion follows a policy choice: shelters have been a municipal responsibility since 1993 and municipalities stopped imposing shelters in new buildings. The record measures places on paper, not whether the rooms could be readied in time. The started year is approximate for the post-war shelter programme and was not read at either source.
Building
How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?
+6.4 over 10 years, from 33.7 in 2016 to 40.1 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 18.737% of GDP
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 17.619% of manufactured exports
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
- History
Logistics infrastructure quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 91.304score 0-100
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.37index
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
- History
Large project delivery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 2 records- Raw value
- no data% overrun
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.
Firm scale-up rate
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of firms
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD DynEmp
- History
- no data
Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
140,397 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 7 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Fehmarn Belt fixed link, and its cost and schedule overrun
The European Court of Auditors found in 2020 that the Fehmarn Belt fixed link, the 18 km rail and road tunnel that Denmark finances, designs and builds through its state company Femern A/S, had an initial cost estimate of 4.4 billion euros at 2008 prices (5.0 billion at 2019 values) against a latest estimate of 7.7 billion, a 54 percent increase, and that construction planned to start in 2012 for opening in 2018 had started in 2020 with opening expected in 2028.
7.7 billion euros, latest cost estimate of the fehmarn belt fixed link transport flagship infrastructure, 2019 values, 2019. 5 billion euros, initial cost estimate re-indexed to 2019 values (4.4 billion euros at 2008 values), 2008 estimate, 2019 values. European Court of Auditors, Special Report 10/2020 'EU transport infrastructures: more speed needed in megaproject implementation to deliver network effects on time', Annexes II and III and Table 3, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Denmark took on the whole financing and construction risk of a cross-border tunnel through a state-owned company repaid from future tolls, under a state treaty that limits the neighbouring country to its own access lines.
Limits: The figures are in a PDF: the timeline table is Annex II (PDF page 66) and the cost table Annex III (PDF page 67), with the 5,016 to 7,711 million euro comparison and 54 percent in the table on PDF page 36. The ECA compares the latest estimate with the first political estimate on purpose, so part of the increase reflects scope settled after 2008, and the re-indexation uses the GDP deflator, not construction prices. The ECA's 'transport flagship infrastructure' includes the Danish and German rail access lines, and Germany finances and builds its own access lines, so the 7.7 billion is not a purely Danish cost; the report states that the tunnel itself is financed, designed and built by Denmark (paragraph 23, PDF page 21) and that the fixed link is therefore a Danish project. The figures are from 2019 and 2020; the tunnel is still under construction, and later Danish estimates and the current opening date were not checked at a Danish source, so the 2028 opening is the ECA's estimate at the time. The ECA reports that the construction start slipped largely because of the German planning approval process and litigation, which is outside Danish institutions' control. The EU co-finances the project, and the ECA audits EU spending, not Femern A/S's management.
Kvalitetsfonden hospital building programme (supersygehuse), and its overruns
Denmark set up Kvalitetsfonden in 2007 to fund a new hospital structure. Through it the regions are building or rebuilding 16 hospitals with a combined investment frame of about DKK 57 billion (2023 prices). Rigsrevisionen reported in November 2023 that the programme's largest overrun, Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland, had its budget raised by DKK 2.3 billion, or 44 percent, and was expected six years later than planned.
44 % overrun, budget increase over the grant frame, nyt hospital nordsjælland (largest overrun in the programme), 2023. 6 years, schedule delay, nyt hospital nordsjælland, expected completion end of 2026 against plan, 2023. Rigsrevisionen (National Audit Office of Denmark), Beretning 4/2023 om byggeriet af Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland, November 2023, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Parliament created a state fund that gave each region a fixed, inflation-indexed grant frame per hospital and made the regions carry any overrun. The health ministry supervised changes against the grant conditions, and Rigsrevisionen audited the projects repeatedly while they were being built.
Limits: The headline 44 percent belongs to one project, the worst in the programme, so it is not the programme's cost performance. The report gives no programme-wide overrun in its text. Figure 2 of the same report lists original and latest budgets in 2009 prices for 15 of the 16 projects, leaving out Nyt Hospital Bispebjerg, whose budget had not been published. Summed by hand, the 15 come to about DKK 43.9 billion against frames of DKK 39.2 billion, roughly 12 percent over. That is our calculation from chart labels, not a published figure. Several projects held their frame partly by cutting scope through savings catalogues, which Rigsrevisionen criticised in Beretning 11/2019 and its follow-ups. A frame that holds after cuts is not a delivery on time and on specification. 2007 is the year the fund was set up. Grants were confirmed project by project afterwards (2013 for Nordsjælland), so construction started years after 2007. The programme is unfinished: Rigsrevisionen's January 2025 follow-up still counted seven projects under construction, six of them under heightened ministry supervision, so final outturns are not known. The figure is a budget forecast in 2023 prices and is reported as a region's estimate, not an audited final account.